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Description:The Journal of African History publishes articles and book reviews
ranging widely over the African past, from the late Stone Age to the present.
In recent years increasing prominence has been given to economic, cultural
and social history and several articles have explored themes which are also
of growing interest to historians of other regions such as: gender roles, demography,
health and hygiene, propaganda, legal ideology, labour histories, nationalism
and resistance, environmental history, the construction of ethnicity, slavery
and the slave trade, and photographs as historical sources. Contributions dealing
with pre-colonial historical relationships between Africa and the African diaspora
are especially welcome, as are historical approaches to the post-colonial period.

The "moving wall" represents the time period between the last issue
available in JSTOR and the most recently published issue of a journal.
Moving walls are generally represented in years. In rare instances, a
publisher has elected to have a "zero" moving wall, so their current
issues are available in JSTOR shortly after publication.
Note: In calculating the moving wall, the current year is not counted.
For example, if the current year is 2008 and a journal has a 5 year
moving wall, articles from the year 2002 are available.

Terms Related to the Moving Wall

Fixed walls: Journals with no new volumes being added to the archive.

Absorbed: Journals that are combined with another title.

Complete: Journals that are no longer published or that have been
combined with another title.

Abstract

The professional Nigerian nationalist historiography which emerged in reaction against the imperialist Hamitic Hypothesis - the assertion that Africa's history had been made only by foreigners - is rooted in a complex West African tradition of critical dialogue with European ideas. From the mid-nineteenth century, western-education Africans have re-worked European ideas into distinctive Hamitic Hypotheses suited to their colonial location. This account developed within the constraints set by changing European and African-American ideas about West African origins and the evolving character of the Nigerian intelligentsia. West Africans first identified themselves not as victims of Hamitic invasion but as the degenerate heirs of classical civilizations, to establish their potential to create a modern, Christian society. At the turn of the century various authors argued for past development within West Africa rather than mere degeneration. Edward Blyden appropriated African-American thought to posit a distinct racial history. Samuel Johnson elaborated on Yoruba traditions of a golden age. Inter-war writers such as J. O. Lucas and Ladipo Solanke built on both arguments, but as race science declined they again invoked universal historical patterns. Facing the arrival of Nigeria as a nation-state, later writers such as S. O. Biobaku developed these ideas to argue that Hamitic invasions had created Nigeria's proto-national culture. In the heightened identity politics of the 1950s, local historians adopted Hamites to compete for historical primacy among Nigerian communities. The Hamitic Hypothesis declined in post-colonial conditions, in part because the concern to define ultimate identities along a colonial axis was displaced by the need to understand identity politics within the Nigerian sphere. The Nigerian Hamitic Hypothesis had a complex career, promoting elite ambitions, Christian identities, Nigerian nationalism and communal rivalries. New treatments of African colonial historiography - and intellectual history - must incorporate the complexities illustrated here.